The problem is that when you’ve gotten used to this modus operandi of two-by-two, when one of your “motors” flunks out, and you’re stuck again on your own, it reduces your power back to one fifth of what by then you might have gotten used to. So, you feel pretty much reduced to a sausage. Folks who’ve undergone separation will know what I’m talking about. The others won’t have a clue, just as I didn’t until it happened to me.

The power of two is great, but don’t necessarily rely on it as infallible, because as long as there’s another human involved, you simply need to take into consideration that this is only a temporary arrangement, even if you happen to be as lucky to have found someone who meant what they said when they swore, “Till death do us part.” – There is still that uncontrollable death factor. But even that is probably not as painful as when someone you’ve fought life’s battles with for many a season deliberately makes the choice to turn their back on you.

Christ was supposed to have been tempted in all things as we are. Unfortunately we don’t know enough about His 30 years of life prior to His public ministry to tell whether there was ever physically anybody in His life whom He loved so much that they broke His heart when they decided to live their life without Him. All we know is that throughout history He’s had a wife (also referred to as His Bride) that probably put Him through the same thing time and again, which is vividly illustrated in the act of God commanding His prophet Hosea to take a prostitute for a wife as a metaphor of the unfaithfulness of His own Old Testament wife.

Later in the Book of Revelation we find similar metaphors of whores and churches who “sit like a queen,” apparently lacking nothing, and yet not knowing that in God’s eyes they’re naked and destitute of the things that apparently really count to Him.

So, to which degree we as God’s wife and bride have broken His heart is hard to tell. One thing is for sure: when you’ve gone through such pain yourself, you wouldn’t ever want to inflict it on anybody else again. Loyalty all of a sudden becomes paramount, when previously it may have been quite irrelevant. Not only the loyalty of others toward ourselves, but also our own toward others and especially God.

How loyal have we really been?

The only explanation for God putting us through the wringer at times like that, where it seems as though He deliberately devastates us by simply withdrawing the person that meant most to us in the world is that we don’t really have a clue about loyalty, especially not our own, as far as He’s concerned. It’s simply not enough of an issue until we learn to appreciate it by the excruciating pain that can be caused by the absence of it. Only once we realize what pain can be caused by broken loyalty are we able to begin to relate to what it means to God, and do we even begin to realize how often we haphazardly switched loyalties for the sake of some advantage, some shiny fruit on a tree, some compromise for the sake of our personal welfare or benefit, some temptation we couldn’t resist…

Perhaps that’s why it often takes quite long for the pain of betrayal and desertion to linger on: It’s only the beginning of our personal lesson on loyalty. We’re only just starting to see how guilty we have been of the same crime that now we feel we can’t forgive someone else for, and not just once, but probably innumerable times.

Loyalty, like so many other values that used to mean something before our society was taken over by the universally accepted as politically correct Western do-your-own- thing dogma, has gone down the drain in this strange new world order, where the only loyalty that counts is to make sure that you don’t move an inch from the place you’re assigned in the Machine. The System needs to continue to function, and that is your foremost responsibility. Human relations, by comparison, are irrelevant.

“Rubbish!” you say – (Or, if you’re American, you might be prone to use another word that starts with “bull….!”)? Well, good for you, if that’s your reality, and if human relationships still mean enough to you to value them above your personal rank, position or economic advantage. But realistically, you’re part of a shrinking minority. And if you’ve got loyalty and you know what it means, for the sake of God and all that is dear to your own soul, hold on to it with all your might and never underestimate it for a moment. In the end, it may be all that determines whether you lost or won your personal battle in this war.

Or, as the Eagles put it in their song “In A New York Minute” which so aptly portrays what can be the fate of all of us at any time:

“If you find somebody to love in this world, you better hang on tooth and nail!”

4 Responses

It’s been a long while since you’d updated your blog and I kinda let it slipped after a couple of visits.

I’m not sure exactly what you mean by loyalty and betrayal in relation to how we view our fellow brothers and sisters in God’s family, or even to the person who shares our lives togther – our wives.

Granted, the human heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked (Jer 17:9), but that should not hinder us from enlarging our hearts towards them that are saved and transformed by the grace of God, despite their flaws and human weaknesses.

See Paul’s attitude towards the Corinthian Christians who’d given him more heartaches and headaches than any other churches he planted in 2 Cor 6:1-13, and how he exhorted them to do the same by following his and his fellow labourers’ examples.

If you search the KJV bible (I don’t know about other versions), you’d be hard pressed to find the word ‘loyal’ or ‘loyalty’. We’re asked to be faithful to God and to our fellow Christians, that is, to believe in God who works all things for good to them that love Him (Rom 8:28), and to believe that God is doing the work in each one of us as His redeemed children, a work in progress that culminates in perfection when Jesus returns.

Loyalty ascribes to someone who’ll always be there for you, and that quality only fit one Person – Jesus Christ (Matt 28:20). Humans can only be a poor reflection at best. Even so, we should continue to love our spouse faithfully even if they do not agree with us, considering that God loves us even when we have distorted understandings of Him.

By the same token, we ought to take our rightful place as a people who’ve received mercy when we do not deserve any at all, and realise that if not for the grace of God, we would not have been what we are now, or ever.

So take heart, brother, and rejoice in this day which God has made, both for you, and for those who might have disappointed us in some ways, for we are all recipients of His manifold goodness.